La Oil Port In Great Shape Despite Recession

Others were harder to convince. Opposition came largely from environmentalists concerned about oil spills and other damage to the state's coast. LOOP's development coincided with revelations about Louisiana's endangered marshland, which has been rapidly eroding for decades under the pressures of river levees and industrial development.

LOOP ultimately tore up hundreds of acres of marsh in Lafourche Parish, making room for the complicated network of pumps and pipelines that carry oil from the offshore dock to refineries in Louisiana, Texas and the Midwest. Those facilities represent 50 percent of the nation's refining capacity.

The port cost $770 million to build, bringing a temporary influx of construction jobs to the state. The facility continues to employ about 160 people.

On a given day, roughly 30 workers are stationed offshore, where they work in shifts tending to daily operations. Others work from an office in Galliano that serves as LOOP's nerve center, which is staffed 24 hours a day.

A 48-inch pipeline pumps the oil to a booster station located at Port Fourchon, which then shoots the fuel into caverns carved out of a natural underwater salt dome in Clovelly, near Galliano. From the salt caverns, or from LOOP's above-ground storage tanks, the oil moves in measured batches to refineries.